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UK Parliament

Home Affairs Committee receives further information from HCL Technologies

7 September 2011

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Lawyers acting on behalf of HCL Technologies have released information outlining further requests for email and information deletions by News International. In a letter to the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee Rt. Hon Keith Vaz MP they outlined four separate occasions when News International requested deletion of folders and emails between December 2009 and June 2011. These include emails from an inbox of a user who has not accessed his email account for eight years and the removal of a personal folder.

Chairman Rt Hon Keith Vaz MP said:

“The request for deletion of folders and emails by News International is concerning. The Committee will continue to investigate the issue of phone hacking and the removal of any information that could possibly point to the prevalence of phone hacking by those working in the organisation.”


(1) Letter from Stuart Benson and Company on behalf of HCL Technologies.

Re: Phone hacking

This is in continuation of my letter dated August 1, 2011. In order to provide further assistance to your Committee, my client, HCL Technologies, has conducted additional key word searches against emails and other documentation either generated by it or received by it since the commencement of its contract with News International. You will recollect from my earlier letter my concern that the very short time frame given by you to HCL for its initial response did not permit a more comprehensive search. During the course of these further searches by my client, which have been more extensive but still focused on the question raised by you of requests or instructions from News International concerning deletions, four further occasions have been identified. Brief details are:

  1. On 9th December 209, the NI service desk, through work order number 12,084, requested deletion of emails from the inbox of a user who had not accessed his email account for eight years. The action was completed.
  2. On 24th February 2010, the NI service desk, through work order number 17,788, requested the deletion of personal folders under the name “Gabriel/uploaded”. The action was completed.
  3. On 28th September 2010, another request was made by the NI service desk through work order number 58,557 to remove a personal folder. The requested files were removed.
  4. On 29th June 2011, the News International service desk requested, by way of work order 95,578, deletion of certain bad or corrupted files. The requested files were deleted.

At the risk of repetition, please don’t hesitate to let me know if you have any further questions for HCL or seek their co-operation in any additional respect.

 
For further information please contact Alex Paterson on 020 7219 1589.